a question of faith: vivant, 75010

The resplendent antique green tilework lining the walls of vin nature entrepreneur Pierre Jancou's new restaurant Vivant seems to have become a kind of Rorschach test for early reviewers. Mentions of the tiling - either disparaging, as when François-Régis Gaudry of L'Express presumed it was 'stolen' from another space gently mocked its artfully banged-up state, or awestruck, as in many blog reviews - seem uncannily reflective of writers' attitudes towards the controversial subjects of natural wine, restaurateurism as creative enterprise, and, of course, Pierre Jancou himself.

How do I feel about the tilework? It's splendid, and original to the space, a former bird shop. I see no other reason to take this salient element of Vivant's simple décor as anything other than a good design choice, unless, never having quite understood natural wines or enlightened restaurateurism, one gleans satisfaction from implying that both are no more than superficial poses. Gaudry's thievery comment scorn is a particularly obvious example; more insidious, if you ask me, are restaurant reviews that almost reflexively describe the clientele of a feted new restaurant as 'bobo,' as even the positive reviews of Vivant have done.

Use of the 'B' word, an identifying feature of hack writing, is basically a sham populist appeal for writers who seek to cosy up to unsophisticated readers. What's worse, in its implication that guests come to a given establishment merely to assuage their own consumerist guilt, the word contains a sad contempt for the very idea that a restaurant might attract a varied, cosmopolitan crowd by dint of its actually being an intelligent, tasteful, ideologically-sound place. Those exist! And Vivant, despite a few earnest missteps, is one of them.

first or second impression: quedubon, 75019

Image swiped from paris-bistro.com.

Rather than devoting weeks of careful thought to My First Post, I figure I might as well just serve up whatever's freshest in mind. At the moment it's the restaurant / cave à vin Quedubon, in the 19eme, where I dined on Friday night in the trusty company of my Native Companion (a Parisian). Since the dinner in question predates the founding of this blog, and I'm no good with forethought, the pictures above are not my own. I filched them. (RESOLUTION: In future posts I'll try to come up with original photographic content.)

Anyway, Quedubon's been on my radar for a while, but this was my first proper meal there. A month or two ago I'd popped by for a wine tasting and was sufficiently impressed with the depth of the blackboard-scrawled wine list that I resolved to return for a full meal, despite the restaurant's unbelievably stupid name. (Surely I'm not the only person who has pointed this out. Imagine an organic restaurant in, say, San Francisco calling itself "Nothing But Good." Diners would choke.) Then some weeks later Quedubon came up in conversation with my friend Guy from Le Dirigeable (a future post...), and he confirmed that, indeed, many of his restaurateur friends had been talking the place up.  All that was left was to await a suitable occasion, which duly arrived when I began to feel guilty for all the help my Native Companion had donated during the course of a challenging catsitting gig earlier this month. (Not worth going into.) 

The verdict?